•••

There were different schools of thought, mostly driven by ego. Many times, when I was starting out, I heard my fellow “professionals” say they did not want to create new characters because they might “give away the next Spider-Man.”

As far as I can tell, that actually happened only once, with Wolverine, and he was far from an overnight success.

DC’s decision to “reboot” Superman seemed to unleash a drive by every artist, writer and editor to do the same with every character, usually “darkening” them to show how cool and edgy they were. (In my opinion this process reached it nadir with the “darkening” of Congorilla.)

It became rather sad to watch writers pitch “dark” versions of the characters, as if that was a new idea and they were the first to think of it.

•••

This bears no resemblance to any known history.

Look at the first couple of years of covers for ACTION COMICS. Superman stars on the first cover, then disappears until the seventh issue. He comes back, then vanishes again. Hardly what we would expect from the promotion of a “hot” new property.